Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Apparently, a man named Jules Manson posted a message on his Facebook page this morning calling (in racist language) for the assassination of the president and his family.

This is bad, stupid, and not incidentally a felony. He took the message down, but of course it was preserved. What has not been preserved is the truth, in various headlines now appearing, of who he is.

He ran for a very minor office several months ago, campaigning to be elected to the Carson city council. That attempt failed. While his Facebook page has been taken down, I looked at his website used for the campaign. In his main posts about his positions, he lists the rent and utilities issues among the main things that caused him to try to run for office. At no point does he mention the Tea Party, and he doesn’t like either of the two main parties out there.

I read all the comments to his website — there were very few. Other than his brother, there was one approving, one disapproving (noting the inconsistency of being a conservative and being for rent control), and one calling him a fraud.

He describes his campaign work and political activity, and does not (that I could see) mention the Tea Party at all.

Lots of people try for city council and don’t make it. That’s no big deal. But after his ugly post this morning, he appeared in the news. Do they describe him as a local guy living in a trailer park? At first, but then, as his action could be made to make others look bad, he was promoted.

The interesting thing is that the Tea Party groups throw out racists quickly whenever they appear, and would not have tolerated someone speaking the way this fellow did this morning. Anyone can show up at a Tea Party gathering, of course, but I saw no evidence that this fellow had done that. Politically, he’s rather confused.

But the key question is this: Does the Tea Party promote or tolerate racism? The answer, of course, is no — as has been demonstrated by the attempts of the Left to infiltrate the Tea Party to hold up racist signs, and getting booted for their trouble.

So, this “Tea Party leader” “right-wing” “religious nut” “Republican” “politician” seems to be absolutely none of the above, unless you stretch the notion of “politician” to mean “I ran for city council one time.”

You will likely see a lot of this fellow’s idiot comment this morning, but some background, I thought, might be useful.

UPDATE (Combined material from the next post):

The current editor of SupportAtheism.com notes that Jules Manson was removed from that organization for similar racist behavior.

FYI, Jules was removed from his association with SupportAtheism.com and the affiliated Atheist months ago due to similar racist behavior.

We have a zero tolerance policy for racism in our community.

But, also I can say from knowing Jules a bit in a professional capacity and reviewing some of his submissions that were political – that he was his own weird extreme kind of libertarian – as far as I know – and granted I removed him and blocked him months ago – he does not identify as a Tea Party member, and in fact spoke derisively of them.

His behavior is reprehensible and perhaps deserves the level of pushback he is getting – but unless he has changed in the last few months- the attempt to paint him as a Tea Party enthusiast is dishonest and short sighted. If anything Jules identifies as a libertarian of an individualistic variety.

I despise the Tea Party, am disgusted by Jules’ behavior, and find hardcore Libertarians to be as guilty of starry eyed idealistic magical thinking as some theists – but I am a big fan of honesty and getting the facts straight.

Best Wishes,

Jacob Kramer
Senior Editor and Co-Founder.
SupportAtheism.com

The reply to this statement is that Kramer is wrong, basically because if the man hates Obama, he must be part of the Tea Party whether he likes the Tea Party or not. Similarly, if the Tea Party ever expressed support for him, then he is a Tea Party member. Leftist logic, I suppose: a poor structure built upon a false premise. Using that same process, you could … never mind.

There is more back-and-forth, but the man with the facts is ignored by the person with the feeling that he MUST be a Tea Party guy. The proof? This image, apparently:
Since this indicates that he’s affiliated with GreeneWave (a blog that seems to assert that Pat Tillman was assassinated by the Bush Administration) and SupportAtheism, he must be part of the the conservative, generally Christian Tea Party.

And this militant atheist Bush-hating conspiracy-mongering racist who wants rent control and price controls is nothing to do with the Left, no sir! (In fact, he’s all over the place, politically; he was described as “his own unique kind of libertarian” by the SupportAtheism editor.
UPDATE: The site that broke this story originally is called the “Democrat Examiner” — and apparently, Jules Manson is also a columnist there. Manson has now appeared and apologized for his comment:

Once you have taken the position that anyone should be imprisoned for careless emotionally driven remarks that had no real substance, you deserve what your government has become. All I can really say is to be careful what you wish for because setting such a precedence can come back to bite you. I have felt deeply regretful and apologized for my past mistakes. Can you do the same? (Jules Manson at the Democrat Examiner website)

The original comment was in extremely bad taste, unarguably racist and inciting in nature … but was more of a rhetorical than direct threat, it seems to me. We’ll see what happens. Most of the people on the Democrat Examiner site are calling for him to go to jail, not realizing that his positions are closer to their than would be comfortable.

UPDATE (12/20/2011): Marmoe spotted an actual article on the Democrat Examiner site (now scrubbed, but preserved here) showing that Jules Manson was a columnist for the site. So there is an “internal feud” aspect to this story that might have its own story, though it can hardly be to blame for Manson’s original intemperate idiocy.

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Hi Keith, as far as Jules being from Mexico and of the “brown race”, is this documented anywhere? I am going to write about this, as another crazy comment was just made by Mr. Manson and it is gleefully documented in the Daily Kos. I hope you don’t mind, I am planning on linking to your site, as well.

http://DeHavelle.com Keith DeHavelle

I’d written a long reply, but it seems to have gotten lost. Send an email to my first name at my last name dot com, and I will be happy to provide the fairest treatment I can. More information can only help.

We can converse by email or by telephone, at your convenience.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

http://DeHavelle.com Keith DeHavelle

Thank you.

I agree on the lack of relevance. The implication people are trying to create is that if person X supports a candidate or cause Y for whatever reason, then any bad action of X can be blamed on Y. That is absurd, and one could use such logic to note the century of support for Democrat candidates by, say, the Communist Party USA. Or Usama bin Ladin’s October 2004 campaign speech for John Kerry. Or all of the bad actions by people and groups who have participated in or announced their support for the Occupy movement.

If the group or candidate supports a particular action, then the “blame” can be justified. (That’s hardly the case with the Tea Party and racism, as demonstrated by the efforts the media has gone to in order to manufacture or imply racism in the absence of evidence.)

People never are exact matches for candidates or groups anyway; sometimes you can feel a strong alignment, and sometimes it’s simply the “least odious” of choices. Perhaps a number of people feel that way in the current Republican race, and the Democrats might regret not having a choice at this point.

I’ve commented in the past about perpetrators of bad acts who were on one political side or the other, but it was generally to correct the record. As often happens, and as happened here, the wrong leap of logic was based on an apparently manufactured connection to begin with.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

http://www.dehavelle.com/ Keith DeHavelle

Hello, Mr. Manson.

It did not occur to me to contact you directly, because I expected that hundreds — or thousands, perhaps — of people would be trying to do so. And that you would likely be … preoccupied.

Nevertheless, I would indeed appreciate the opportunity for an interview, and a chance to learn more. I promise to report what I learn fairly. I saw a whole lot of information being manufactured about you and your positions; this did not seem to be at all accurate. But I was left to connect relatively sparse dots. As you know, different stories can be told from the same information, by including some and excluding others — or not knowing other bits to include.

I’m willing to fix it.

I thought the other editor at SupportAtheism.com played things well; he obviously wasn’t happy with your remarks or aspects of the relationship, but felt that telling the truth was more important than scoring points. I appreciated his approach, and wrote him and said so.

If you send an email to (my first name) at (my last name) dot com it will get to me, and we can proceed from there by email. Or a telephone call, or whatever seems to make sense to you.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Noyb123

Thank you for this post. I have noticed that your efforts most assuredly contributed to several news outlets curiously removing the “tea party” from Mr. Manson’s affiliations. If only all journalists would do their homework before jumping to conclusions. Even so, the supposed tea party connection should not be relevant and actually, considering that the president receives 30 death threats a day (according to the Telegraph), it is interesting how the press practically salivated over this particular story. The sad thing is that any good that Mr. Manson may have done will now be always overshadowed by his racist remarks.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jules-Manson/1478544176 Jules Manson

I wish to add a few things to my comments. I have worked for as an editor and contributor for greenewave and supportatheism. I do not wish my ugly remarks to reflect on these two fine organizations or anyone who works for them. I have nothing but good things to say about them and everyone who works there. I have also worked for examiner — another fine online news source whom I was very lucky to have once worked for. At the time of my membership with them they had no reason to believe I would have ever made such remarks.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jules-Manson/1478544176 Jules Manson

A good part of the information you dug up is true but opinions are mostly false. If you want factual details all you had to do was ask.

Secondly, your reporting was rather slanted. There is always another perspective behind every story. That is what I often try to do whenever I write and hence why the majority of people find my views rather strange at times.

Thank you for linking a sample article at examiner. I believe it was a good example of some good original reporting on news events. Needless to say, I was fired from there.

If you would like a follow up interview I would be very happy to provide one but please promise to be fair and balanced this time. But I must first wait for the Secret Service to complete their investigation of me. I promise to be very honest as I have been with them. Can you please do the same as well? Thank you.

Tm Perkins76

By the way on his Facebook page as of early yesterday morning he claims to be considering a run as a Democrat in an upcoming State Senate race. This guy is a nut.

She has an “Anti-Tea-Party” link (and discussions of “Crash the Tea Party” and similar folks) but generally it’s a non-issue. Certainly in the discussions I’ve been personally involved in at Tea Party rallies, racism was explicitly discussed as an attack on the group by leftists. If you see a racist, he is almost certainly an infiltrator, in other words. Zero tolerance for racist nonsense.

There have been a few “booting” instances documented with LaRouche folks, I think — those same people are welcome at Occupy protests now.

Let me know if you need something more specific, and I’ll try to help.